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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Monsieur Verdoux is firmly ensconced as my favorite of Chaplin's features, an appreciation that only ever deepens with each viewing. What few quibbles I once had, primarily leveled at its direction, now seem merely follies of ignorance, as it is precisely the horror and black comedy coded into every frame of his sparkling bourgeois interiors that gives the film so much of its bite. Criterion's new Blu-Ray cannot fully overcome some irreparable elements of the extant print, but it nevertheless looks better than ever and bears out the genius still at work in Chaplin's visual and aural design. Some intriguing extras round out of vital addition to the Collection.